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In the diary of Percy Ebenezer Trower that I mentioned yesterday are frequent references to “Ern and Doll Nye”. Apart from being good friends I had no idea who they were or whether they were related although I suspected they might be related to Percy’s wife Kate Standing.

Ern and Doll also appeared in some of the photos that I had which had originally come from Percy’s collection, so I thought it would be good idea to try to identify them properly.

It was highly likely that Ern and Doll were nicknames, my thinking was that they were probably Ernest and Dorothy Nye, but I couldn’t find a suitable marriage for that combination.

Fortunately last night I came across an entry in the diary for the silver wedding anniversary of Ern and Doll in April 1951. Even armed with that fact it took a while to find the marriage in the GRO indexes.

It looks very likely that Ern was actually Henry Ernest Nye and Doll was in fact Emily Standing (more than likely Percy’s sister-in-law). They were married in Q2 1926 in Cuckfield Registration District.

I will need to check the actual marriage entry to make sure that Emily was Kate’s sister but I was able to match the death of Henry Ernest Nye in the GRO indexes with the death of Ern in Percy’s diary, so it seems a likely match.

This morning I decided to try to find out a few details for Henry Ernest Nye. He was born in 1902 so the obvious place to look was the 1911 census. Henry Ernest was living in Ansty, Sussex the son of Ernest and Anne Nye. The address they were living at in 1911 was Diamond Jubilee Cottages.

Presumably these cottages had been built around the time of the diamond jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1897. How strange that I should have turned up this record during the diamond jubilee of our present Queen!